Book Launch

As we get down to it, less than ten days, I thought I’d say a little something about the launch of a novel. Keep in mind my experience is not necessarily the norm.

Launching a book is not like launching a rocket. You can countdown all you want, but there’s too many things outside of your control to be accurate. Nyphron Rising is not having a midnight release. I know. All of you are holding a hand to your mouth in shock right now. Not having that kind of expected interest, neither I nor my publisher, have the power to mount an orchestrated release. Although wouldn’t that be cool? All these people dressed up as Royce and Hadrian giving nasty looks to those dressed up as Saldur and Guy. Perhaps there would be a Montemorcy Vineyard wine tasting, huge inflatable Gilarabrywns and By Mar! t-shirts.

Instead we try to queue things up as best we can so that the book comes out roughly on schedule in all its forms, Amazon, Bookstores and Kindle—sorry still no audio or eBook with this release. Each of these venues takes a different, and mystifyingly unknown, amount of time to process the book and make it available to readers. Anywhere from three to fifteen days, which is an annoyingly vague spread when trying to set up a coordinated effort. Can you imagine the British telling Eisenhower that from the moment he says go it will take between three and fifteen days for the D-Day invasion to actually launch? And that the timing will be arbitrarily different for the paratroopers, infantry and armored divisions.

The result is that Nyphron Rising will not burst on to the world stage with a fanfare, but rather trickle out here and there. Most likely those with Kindle will see it first, then those accessing Amazon, then those getting it directly from me, and finally, the bookstores. The more complex the distribution system the longer it takes to process.

The good news is that it is coming and on schedule—depending on which venue you plan to buy it through.